It's not always easy being a Dallas sports fan, and this year may prove to
be tougher than most. If watching that Cowboys' game yesterday left you with
some unwanted, unpleasant physical sensations, we've got some important tips
for you! Or, if you couldn't care less about sports but still occasionally face
headaches or nausea, keep on reading.

Headaches are common and often occur along with stressful situations, such
as watching a figurative train wreck play out on Sunday night football. Acute
headaches that occur suddenly are most often due to benign blockages of one
sort or another, from muscular tension to more subtle blockages of blood and
fluids into and out of the head. Luckily, we've got a button for that, built
right into our hands and easily accessible any time of day. It's located right
in the center of that fleshy area between your thumb and forefinger. Using your
opposite hand, grasp this area using your thumb to apply deep pressure into
this flesh. If you push deep, there will be a deep ache. Holding and rubbing on
this spot for around a minute, as needed throughout the day can help take the
edge off of any headache.

For nausea, vomiting, and upset stomach, such as following when the 'Boys
throw three consecutive interceptions, the point is on the palmar side of the
wrist. As you can see in the picture below, the point is three fingers from the
wrist crease in the center of the arm. Just as with the headache point, pushing
in deeply here should produce a fairly strong aching sensation. Again, pushing
and rubbing this point with your opposite thumb for about a minute can help
alleviate those digestive symptoms.

May next week be better for us fans, but if it's not, these handy tricks
will get us all through regular season.

Are you feeling hot headed these days? If you’re like many of our patients
at Lake Highlands Acupuncture,
you may notice more headaches during these scorching Dallas summers.

Traditional Chinese Medicine has several explanations for summer headaches.
(Remember, this ancient medicine is based entirely on nature!) First, heat
causes symptoms that tend to flare upward (such as into the head). Think of a
campfire flame. In your body, hot energy does the same thing. Heat rises and
creates pressure in the head. Heat also exacerbates underlying temperature
imbalances that may lead to headache. Furthermore, a variety of allergens are
prevalent in the summer, which can irritate the respiratory system and lead to
sinus-related headaches.

When these seasonal headaches arise, most people pop a pill. Aspirin,
Tylenol, and Advil are so commonly used in our society that they’ve come to be
considered absolutely safe. And, most of the time, used as directed, they are.
However, over the last couple of years, more reasons to be careful have cropped
up than ever before. For example, Tylenol
is the nation’s leading cause of sudden liver failure, and the difference
between an effective dosage amount and a dangerous dosage amount may be
surprisingly small. In fact, acetaminophen (the generic name for Tylenol)
overdose is one of the most
common poisonings in the world! It may be time to try something different,
something more natural and safer.

There are plenty of things you can do at home to relieve the symptoms of
most headaches. First, for almost any headache, apply cold above and heat
below. The easiest way to do so is to place an ice pack on the forehead or top
of the head and a heating pad on the feet, and lie comfortably for 15 minutes.
You can also do this in a hot bath with an ice pack on the head. Second,
rubbing a few drops of lavender essential oil into the temples and on the bony
spot behind the ears is pleasant and effective. If your headache symptoms
coincide with weather changes or allergy symptoms, ginger tea is a good
addition to the above suggestions.

Some foods and beverages can also assist in your relief. If you are
dehydrated, watermelon with a sprinkling of sea salt is a wonderful summer
treat. Also, tension in the muscles of your head can be aided by foods high in
magnesium like cashews, avocados, and leafy greens like spinach. Upping your
intake of fish like mackerel and salmon may also help by increasing your levels
of coenzyme Q10.

And, because most headaches have a muscular tension component, simple
self-massage can be very effective. Concentrate on the muscular areas at the
jaws and temples with firm but supple circular strokes, as well as along the
back of the neck at the base of the skull.

For your more stubborn or recurrent headaches, it may be time to take the
next step, and acupuncture is a very good option.
Studies show that acupuncture is effective for the treatment of tension
type headaches, as well as
migraines. Significant relief can often be achieved in as little as one
treatment.

Based upon several factors, including location, quality, duration, and
accompanying symptoms, a licensed Dallas acupuncturist like Bryan Ellett at Lake Highlands Acupuncture can determine
which of several causes may underlie your headaches. Most of the time,
improvement in a current headache can be seen in just one treatment. Still, for
ongoing and recurrent headaches, several treatments may be required to achieve
maximum efficacy.

Additionally, Chinese herbal medicine is a tremendous resource for relieving
the symptoms of headache and preventing their return. As with acupuncture, a
licensed acupuncturist can determine what the cause of the headache is and
prescribe herbs that naturally treat the symptoms and promote the body’s
ability to heal the underlying issues that are at the root of the problem.
Chinese herbal formulas are combined in a way to achieve maximum results with
minimal side effects. Both herbs and acupuncture have over a thousand years of
case histories to draw from and overall histories going back several thousand
years further.

Further, since acupuncturists are trained in nutrition, Bryan can give you
personalized diet and lifestyle tips, like the ones above, that don’t require a
trip to Lake Highlands
Acupuncture. We want to teach you to manage your health with the common
sense of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Many people have come to feel that their headaches are something that must
be suffered and endured. Most often, the imbalances in the body that underlie
the headaches can be addressed holistically, and acupuncture and herbal
medicine have been shown effective in doing so. Come in to Lake Highlands Acupuncture, cool off,
and experience life without the suffering.

Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is first characterized as an uncomfortable
feeling in the hand, often of tingling. It becomes more frequent or even
continuous as the condition progresses. CTS sensations often occur more
frequently at night and during sleep and may wake people from their sleep. The
classic CTS comment is, “I wake in the middle of the night with my hands
tingling and have to shake them to make them stop.” Sounds like it's time to
visit Lake Highlands
Acupuncture!

As CTS progresses, the symptoms can progress to include the inability to
manipulate objects, weakness, and wrist pain, which may migrate into the upper
arm or even the shoulder region. Eventually tingling is replaced by numbness,
as if one were wearing a rubber glove. Numbness and tingling affect the thumb,
index, and middle fingers. As the disease progresses, lack of coordination
turns into severe, debilitating weakness, especially in the motion of opposing
the thumb to the rest of the hand.

CTS occurs primarily because of overuse and repetitive use injury, as with
musicians, athletes, and those who work on a computer. Constriction in the
wrist causes the muscles and tendons in the hands to be malnourished, and the
blockage causes pain. Acupuncture and herbs combine to free the blockage,
allowing blood and energy to again flow freely into the fingers and nourish the
malnourished tissues, which means your hands can work and feel like normal
again! Recent research has shown that
acupuncture is as effective as steroid injection for CTS and carries fewer side
effects!

CTS, as well as other progressive, repetitive-use injuries should be treated as
soon as possible. Aside from the obvious discomforts and inconveniences of the
malady, the sooner you seek help, the fewer treatments will be needed to get
symptoms under control. That said, regardless of how long you've had symptoms,
significant relief can occur with just one acupuncture treatment! Come on in to
Lake Highlands Acupuncture and give it a try, especially before undergoing
surgery.

Life wasn’t always like this! Our ancestors could scarcely have imagined the
sheer number and constancy of stressors that each of us deal with every day,
and it never lets up! Work and school don’t quit, children don’t raise
themselves, traffic doesn’t move fast enough, and the demands placed on us,
both voluntary and involuntary, are enough to make even a strong person
crumble.

All of that stress has an effect on your body. From a physiological standpoint,
chronic stress keeps the sympathetic nervous system (your fight-or-flight
response) active, even when it should be giving way to your parasympathetic
system (your rest-and-digest response). The result is impaired digestion,
difficulty focusing, increased blood pressure, headaches, and more. But
acupuncture for stress and anxiety can mitigate these effects. How?

Studies show that acupuncture reestablishes the parasympathetic nervous system
(Li, 2013),
allowing the body to rest and reset. Even prisoners in prison psychiatric units
have decreased levels of stress hormones, require fewer psychiatric
medications, and report greater feelings of calmness after receiving
acupuncture (Berman,
2002).

At Lake Highlands Acupuncture
and Herbs, we will take careful note of how stress is affecting your body
and will create a personalized treatment plan and fully customized herbal
prescription to get you feeling like yourself again. Stress is everywhere, but
we can help your body process it more effectively, leaving you calmer and
healthier. Try acupuncture for stress and anxiety today!

Eating should be a pleasure! Unfortunately, for many of us, digestive
difficulties like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), acid reflux, gas and
bloating, and constipation can make eating feel more like a chore.

We all know that food is one of life’s necessities, but few realize that many
seemingly unrelated symptoms, such as poor concentration, poor sleep, and
fatigue may be due to digestive problems. The body needs to process food
efficiently and effectively to produce the essential elements it needs to run.
If your digestion is impaired, every bodily system can be affected.

Acupuncture and
Chinese herbs help to relieve unfortunate digestive symptoms associated
with these conditions by strengthening the digestive organs, interrupting the
negative impact of stress on digestion,
improving the body’s ability to absorb and assimilate nutrients, and easing the
process of elimination. Studies have found that acupuncture for irritable bowel
syndrome provides an additional benefit over usual care alone, and the
magnitude of the effect is sustained over the longer term (MacPherson,
2012). Also, acupuncture effectively inhibits the intraesophageal acid and
bile reflux in GERD patients, alleviating patients’ symptoms safely (Zhang, 2010).

At Lake Highlands
Acupuncture, we believe in following a common sense diet based on the way
humans have eaten since the beginning of time. To understand what that means,
think back to our hunter-gatherer ancestors. They ate mostly plants, especially
wild greens, berries, and nuts, and some meat and fats, like eggs. They didn’t
have ready access to sugar, except for the occasional honey from a highly
guarded beehive! Further, they didn’t binge on processed grains, which add on
excess calories with little nutrition to speak of.

But eating fresh, unprocessed, low-sugar foods isn’t always an option during
our fast-paced, 30-minute-lunch-break kind of lives. So we must learn to forage
for real foods the way our ancestors did, except what once were lush forests
and rivers are now golden arches and concrete drive-throughs. In our modern
jungle, we’re looking for vegetable- and protein-heavy meals made out of real,
fresh ingredients. That means no buns, no batters, and no weird oils. It also
means high quality meats and organic veggies, which, let's be honest, you're
not going to find in a fast food joint. But let's act like our foremothers and
fathers and make do with what we can. Prepare your own high-quality food
anytime you can, but in a pinch, these fast food options won’t derail the
healthy patterns you’ve already set in motion.

Chick-Fil-A Grilled Market Salad

This gorgeous salad features baby greens, cabbage, carrots, blue cheese, and
berries. As with most fast food salads, this chain gets you with the dressing.
We love good fats, but these dressings are riddled with soybean oils, sugar,
and fake colors. Their Light Italian Dressing most resembles real food, so go
with that—unless you keep your own olive oil and vinegar in your car, which
these days, is not a bad idea. You’re a modern-day forager after all!

Subway Make Your Own Salad

Their marketing doesn’t lie! Subway is one of those few gems where you
really can “eat fresh.” Still, forego the processed buns (your other buns will
thank you), and order a plain salad loaded with veggies, and stack it high with
plain chicken. Top it off with a little olive oil and vinegar. Subway does
offer real oil and real vinegar, so hug your sandwich artist.

Carl’s Jr. Low Carb Six Dollar Burger

Carl’s Jr. was among the first to market a bun-free burger. Made of the
standard 100% black angus beef patty, two slices of cheese, tomato, red onions
and dill pickles wrapped in a romaine lettuce leaf, the burger, which boasts
just 6g of carbs, is a great fast food option. And as if we needed to remind
you, say no to the fries and soda.

Wendy’s Chicken Caesar Salad

The Wendy’s Chicken Caesar Salad has just 180 calories and 8 grams of carbs.
As with the other salads on this list, ditch the dressing they offer and forage
for your own real oil and vinegar. And those “homestyle croutons”? Throw them
to the pigeons. On second thought, don’t. Pigeons shouldn’t eat them
either.

KFC Oven Roasted Chicken with Green Beans

Most chicken joints offer some sort of grilled option, so this tip isn’t
just for your next visit with Colonel Sanders. We’re not worried about the fat
in the fryer (assuming it’s real fat, not chemical soybean garbage) or the skin
(yummy and healthy). It’s the floury, sugary, processedy batter. Pair your
batterless chicken with some green beans, mustard greens, or other non-potato
veggie, and you’ve got a delicious lunch ready to go. You don’t even have to
run to your car for salad dressing!

Chipotle Burrito Bowl

At Lake Highlands
Acupuncture, we’re often too busy (and too lazy) to make our own lunches.
So we have Chipotle at least once a week. It’s the best of the fast food world
hands down. The company actually cares about the quality of its food and offers
hormone-free meats and cheeses, and some locally sourced vegetables. Still, the
only way to go is the burrito bowl with no rice and beans. (Okay, you can have
a few beans… and light on the mucus-producing cheese.) Stack the bowl high with
grilled veggies, meats, fresh salsa, and guacamole. But their sugary salad
dressing? Off to your car…

Boston Market Healthy Buffet

We know you’ll want some potatoes and gravy, but focus on what you can have
at Boston Market. How does some delicious Roast Turkey Breast sound? Or some
Tuscan Herb Rotisserie Chicken? Pair these forager-friendly options with fresh
steamed vegetables or the broccoli with garlic butter sauce. You’ll be so
satisfied, you won’t sweat the missing starch.

Panda Express Mandarin Chicken

Nearly all of the entrees at Panda Express are trans-fat free, which means
no chemists in the kitchen. So they’re doing something right. The Mandarin
Chicken has 250 calories and just 8 grams of carbs, making it a tasty,
healthier choice for Chinese take-out. (Don’t confuse this with the Orange
Chicken, which is a sugar bomb with 42 grams of carbs.) A second good option
for Texans is the Broccoli Beef, which gives you a nice dose of your
cancer-fighting cruciforms as well.

Taco Bell’s Fresco Tacos

Taco Bell’s Fresco or “Fresh” menu sounds promising for us fast food
foragers! Well, it almost is… if you skip the two Fresco burritos. A
single burrito packs a whopping 48g of carbohydrates—over one-third of what an
average person needs each day. The tacos, however, are only about 13-17g per
taco and feature meat and fresh salsa made in-house. While we don’t like the
refined grains in the tortilla, foraging is about compromise. It’s also about
moderation, so stick to only one or two tacos (or ditch the tortillas and order
more). And skip those weird Styrofoam cinnamon things they call dessert. What
are those anyway?

Five Guys Bunless Burgers

We love that this beloved Northeastern chain has taken root in Texas. Null
on sugar and refined carbohydrates, the bunless burgers pack a big protein
punch. Still, moderation is important. The Little Hamburger has 16g of protein,
whereas the regular hamburger has 32g. Adults need around 45-60g of protein per
day, depending on body type and activity level, so plan your daily protein
intake accordingly. Admittedly, the vegetable offerings are slim-pickings at
Five Guys, but load up where you can on grilled mushrooms, green peppers,
jalepenos, tomatoes, and pickles. High fives for Five Guys!

McDonald’s Premium Bacon Ranch Salad with Grilled Chicken

Do you detect a pattern? What does a healthy meal look like in the fast food
world? A grilled chicken salad! No complaints here. We’ll take it, especially
with 3 cups of veggies, jack and cheddar cheese, and thick cut Applewood smoked
bacon, as this tasty salad boasts. As a bonus, McDonald’s does offer Newman’s
Own brand dressings, which are historically health-minded (hello, pronounceable
ingredients!). Use Newman’s balsamic or Italian dressing, and you really will
have a happy meal!

Burger King’s Chicken Caesar Garden Fresh Salad

Second verse, same as the first… batterless chicken, veggies, use their
dressing if you dare must. Word to the wise: skip the “Real Fruit
Smoothie.” Poor BK’s heart is in the right place, but these sugar bombs aren’t
doing us foragers any favors. Stick to your veggies and protein, and you will
have earned that paper crown.

Long John Silver’s Baked Cod and Shrimp and Seafood Salad Side

The baked cod contains only 120 calories, 21 grams of protein and is carb
free. All this makes for a particularly tasty meal when paired with a shrimp
and seafood salad (carrots, cherry tomatoes, salad shrimp, shredded cheese, no
croutons) for just 15 grams of carbs. Shiver me timbers, if you can eat healthy
here, you can eat healthy anywhere!

Pain is a natural part of life and an important communication from your body
that there is something wrong. It can be the result of acute injury, organ
dysfunction, repetitive action, stress and tension, or general deterioration,
among other causes. But what really matters to us is that it hurts!

The most important thing in dealing with pain is finding the cause and, if
possible, correcting it. With acute injuries, time does most of the work,
eventually. Unfortunately, many forms of pain become chronic and are difficult
to treat. Pharmaceutical pain killers are effective but also carry the risk of
dependence as well as a host of unwanted side-effects. At Lake Highlands Acupuncture, we
know acupuncture relieves a wide variety of pains, and the evidence backs us
up.

Acupuncture and herbal medicine help effectively relieve a variety of pain
conditions, speeding up both acute injury recovery and treating chronic pain.
Studies have found that acupuncture can be an effective, well-tolerated therapy
for chronic low-back pain with no major adverse events (Weiss, 2013). Further,
acupuncture can be considered as one of the more effective physical treatments
for alleviating osteoarthritis knee pain (Corbett, 2013). Also,
acupuncture has been found to have efficacy for pain among the older population
(Abdulla, 2013), and
acupuncture can be considered as a useful way of treatment for the patients who
suffer from chronic muscular-skeletal diseases (Najafi, 2013). For
you headache sufferers, acupuncture could be a valuable non-pharmacological
tool in patients with frequent episodic or chronic tension-type headaches
(Linde, 2009).

What all this means is that acupuncture is effective for a wide variety of
painful conditions and carries little to no risk, when performed by a trained,
licensed acupuncturist, as compared to traditional treatment strategies. Give
Lake Highlands
Acupuncture a try! You’ll be glad you did.

Meditation has gotten a reputation over the years as a hippie practice
requiring incense and the Grateful Dead.

While we at Lake Highlands
Acupuncture can sing you every lyric to "Ripple," some of the most
experienced meditators I know are devout Christians (Psalms 104:34: May my
meditation be pleasing to Him, for I rejoice in the Lord.)

Others are atheists or agnostics. Meditation has no requirements, other than
sitting in a chair for a little while. But why do it?

It could be your ticket to better health and reduced pain.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has always seen the body and the mind as
inextricably linked. All this means is that the stuff going on in your head can
affect what is going on in your body.

Your heart beats faster when someone cuts you off in traffic, or you’ve got
a lot on your mind so you can’t sleep. Nothing new there.

The body-mind connection can work on a more subtle level too. For example,
have you ever had a headache and then gotten wrapped up in a movie or a great
conversation?

Sometimes, you forget you have a headache. In other words, intense focus
altered how you experienced pain. In that same vein, modern researchers think
that meditation helps retrain the brain’s perception of pain.

A 2011 study in The Journal of
Neuroscience illustrated how a little over one hour of meditation
instruction deactivated the pain-related brain centers in people who had never
meditated before. That’s a pretty powerful finding.

When we think of the body making profound changes, we think of extreme
events: “Well, of course that Olympian has a resting heart rate of 30. He’s run
20 miles a day for 5 years.”

But here we have proof that you can change the entire way your brain
processes pain, just by sitting down and focusing for a few minutes each day.
And it happens fast.

The benefits extend beyond pain though. According to Mayo Clinic, studies suggest that meditation
may also be helpful with:

• allergies

• anxiety disorders

• asthma

• binge eating

• cancer

• depression

• fatigue

• heart disease

• high blood pressure

• irritable bowel syndrome

• sleep problems

• substance abuse

Other studies have shown promising effects on Parkinson’s, dementia, and
other neurological conditions.

In our own backyard, a forthcoming study out of Texas Women’s University
by Dr. Linda Csiza examines the effects of meditation on multiple sclerosis
(MS) pain and fatigue, and the initial results are extremely promising.

Lake Highlands
Acupuncture is glad to see modern research catching up with ancient Chinese
medicine's view of an integrated mind and body.

First, did you know that your stomach is one of the most powerful weapons
you have against cold and flu?

Think about it: your stomach is a big sack of acid ready to break down
anything that falls into it, including pathogens.

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) describes the stomach as a furnace that
transforms the good and burns up the bad. Further, TCM asserts that digestive
upset is often due to too little fire, or stomach acid, instead of too
much.

Yet, we often pop an antacid at the first sign of discomfort and “put out
the fire.” Doing this too frequently can disarm one of your greatest weapons
against cold and flu. A simple at-home test can tell you whether you’ve got too
much or too little acid.

Next time you feel digestive discomfort like heartburn, take a small
spoonful of a high quality apple cider vinegar, like Bragg’s Apple Cider
Vinegar. If it quells the pain, you’re experiencing hypochloridia, a fancy name
for not enough stomach acid.

Hypochloridia is easily remedied with apple cider vinegar or other
supplementation. Our neighbors at Northlake Health Food have some good
options.

Second, avoid mucus-producing foods like dairy. We can devour a cheese plate
as quickly as the next guy or gal, but at the peak of winter, go light on the
Limburger. And this goes for everybody.

People with full-blown dairy allergies know how milk can affect them, but
those without a severe allergy might not notice the more subtle mucus-producing
effects. This low-grade mucus isn’t a big problem normally, but when coupled
with poor digestion and an abundance of winter viruses, it can stack the cards
against your immune system.

Finally, if your defenses are down and you show signs of a cold, use the
home remedy we recommend to all of our patients. It’s easy, and it’s cheap.

Boil one inch of sliced ginger root, 1-2 inches of the white part of a
scallion, diced, and a dash of brown sugar for 10 minutes in a mug’s worth of
water. Drink. Take a hot bath or shower, then dry quickly, and immediately wrap
up in a blanket. Get a moderate sweat going for 10 minutes. Dry off and put on
some cozy clothes. Stay warm!

In our family, this little recipe knocks out our symptoms a majority of the
time. Other times, we have to supplement with some Chinese herbs we have
stocked just in case. (Lake
Highlands Acupuncture has a full herbal pharmacy, so you can stock up for
your family, too.)

A cornerstone of TCM is being attuned to nature. It’s winter—a time for
hibernation and rest. You may notice your pets sleeping more these days.
Sometimes getting sick is the body’s way of saying, “Hey, let’s take it
easy.”

So listen to your body (and your dog). Take it easy! Your body will insist
you do one way or another.

Ah, the new school year, 2013. The leaves are turning brown, there is an icy
note in the morning air. Check that, this is Dallas! It's still 100 degrees,
and the only reasons those leaves are turning brown are heat and dryness. But
even though it doesn't look like fall (or smell like it or feel like it), the
season of renewed germ exposure is upon us. Come in to Lake Highlands Acupuncture to get
a boost for your immune system, helping you fight off more infections or
rebound more quickly when one of those pesky viruses or bacteria sneak through.
How can acupuncture and herbal medicine do this?

I've spoken in previous blog posts about the precious substance of qi. Qi is
the body's vital energy, that which makes all of the organs function and
perform the work of being a healthy human being. But qi, like blood, is not a
single thing. Just as blood is made up of (among others) white cells that
perform immune functions, red cells that carry iron, and platelets that clot,
there are different aspects of qi as well. Today, I'm going to focus on
wei or protective qi.

The great majority of the body's qi is derived from the food and water we
consume. This nourishment travels from the mouth into the digestive system. In
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), the stomach and the spleen are responsible
for digestion, with the spleen's importance being paramount. This spleen is not
exactly like the physiological spleen we understand in the West, but may indeed
be closer in function to the pancreas. The aforementioned nourishment is
separated in the stomach into two parts: the heavy and the light. The heavy is
what is sent further into the intestines for the absorption of further
nutrients. The light, a sort of precursor qi known as gu qi, is sent
to the spleen where it is separated into ying qi, which is a
nourishing form of qi that makes up part of the blood, and wei qi, the
protective form of qi we are interested in here.

The spleen sends the wei qi to the lungs, which have the functions of
controlling and distributing it. The wei qi has several functions,
including nourishing and moistening the soft tissues of the skin and muscles,
opening and closing the pores to maintain body temperature, and defending the
body by preventing the invasion of external pathogens. Thus, the wei
qi is an important aspect of your immune system. Because it protects the
exterior of the body, it works rather as an armor against invading
pathogens.

To best perform the job of immunity, the wei qi must be plentiful and
must move freely. As described above, the wei qi is derived from the
digestive process. So, if digestion is impaired, it is easy for wei qi
to be deficient. Furthermore, the path of food and water intake is also a
possible pathway for external pathogenic invasion, so peak digestive function
(strong digestive fire) is directly as well as indirectly important in
immunity.

Also as noted above, the lungs are responsible for dispersing the wei
qi, helping it move in the spaces where it is needed. So, if lung function is
impaired, wei qi's movement is impaired, and the defensive response is
impaired. In TCM, the lungs are referred to as the "imperial carriage roof",
meaning the organ that is above all the other vital organs and acts as a
protective canopy-like barrier. This is where pathogenic invasions most
commonly occur, because the lungs are the primary barrier to the exterior where
the pathogens exist.

Sometimes, though, no matter what you do, some germ will sneak through and you
may get a cold. You probably know the first symptom that alerts you to an
upcoming sickness. It could be a scratchy throat, tingling back, bizarre
fatigue. Whatever it is, you've probably had it enough to recognize it for what
it presages: upcoming sickness. At this first sign, a home herbal remedy should
be immediately applied! In a teapot or saucepan, add about 1 mugs-worth of good
clean water, along with about a 1 inch section of ginger root cut into thin
slices and a 2 inch section of the white end of a green onion. Boil for about
10 minutes. If you desire, for flavor, a bit (1/2 tsp or so) of honey may be
added to the hot mixture after boiling. Let the liquid cool enough to sip, then
enjoy it in a nice hot bath. The beverage will open your pores and the heat
will cause sweating. The sweating is a good thing, as it releases some of the
pathogen and impurities causing you to feel bad. After getting out of the bath,
roll up under a heavy blanket and sweat for a few more minutes. Then, dry off
and put on some warm clothes and socks. If done early enough, this simple
treatment may knock out a sickness before it has a chance to take hold. Dealing
with a cough? Try this recipe!

So you can see, keeping the digestive and respiratory systems functioning at
their peaks is the most important way to promote immunity during cold and flu
seasons. At Lake Highlands
Acupuncture, we provide you with custom herbal formulations and custom
acupuncture treatments that promote digestive function, keep everyday stressors
from impeding digestion, promote respiratory function, and boost your
wei qi. Come in early. It is much easier to boost immune qi before
allergies and flus hit than after. If you know when respiratory allergies tend
to hit, come in a good 6 weeks before, and we'll get your immune barrier
functioning at its best.

There are more than a couple explanations as to how acupuncture works.
First, I have to say that a definitive mechanism of acupuncture has not been
scientifically proven. But placing needles at precise locations on the body
does something, oh yes it does. One visit to Lake Highlands Acupuncture will
prove that. So, let's look at some of the things we know about it.

We'll start with the basics. The human body uses a tremendous amount of its
resources and physiological responses to maintain a state of homeostasis.
Homeostasis is a state of balance in the body of such things as temperature,
blood pressure and composition, and digestive pH. These things don't stay at
exactly static levels but rather hover around a middle point. For example, your
body temperature is lower first thing in the morning and changes throughout the
day, but the body works to keep the temperature within a healthy, normal range
of a couple degrees. There are many more examples of homeostatic changes
here.

Your body uses a variety of resources to maintain this homeostasis. Energy,
calories in the form of glucose or glycogen, is burned to raise your
temperature. Blood pressure increases require either increased volume of blood
or constriction of the blood vessels. It's pretty complex stuff. In Traditional
Chinese Medicine (TCM), the primary resources the body uses for its
physiological functions include qi (pronounced "chee"), blood, body fluids, and
essence. These are known as the four vital substances. A very basic
understanding of TCM is that such interventions as acupuncture or herbal
supplementation have the intended result of the most efficient use of the vital
substances possible. If the vital substances are used efficiently, the body is
functioning correctly.

Now, this is purpose, not action. This doesn't tell you how it works, just what
it's supposed to do. How does it work? Let's start with TCM theory. TCM is a
holistic medicine, seeing the body as a whole rather than as merely a
collection of individual organs doing their separate things. The body is
interconnected by a series of meridians, or channels, most of which connect the
body top to bottom and bottom to top. Through these channels, the vital
substances, and most especially qi, flow. Qi is energy, but it takes many
forms. The electrical impulses traveling along your nerves are a form of qi.
The muscular contractions moving food from your mouth, into your stomach and
intestines, and out of the bowels are also a form of qi. When qi flows freely,
there is health. When qi is blocked for some reason, there is disease, such as
pain, constipation, weakness. Acupuncture is performed by placing needles at
the specific locations of the body where these channels of qi flow closest to
the skin, thereby affecting the flow of qi in that channel.

So that's the theory. Since neither meridians nor qi have been scientifically
proven to exist, let's check out what has been proven to happen. Medscape has an interesting
article on acupuncture mechanism, stating in part,

"An interesting study demonstrating the map of a meridian pathway involved
the injection of Technitium99, a radioactive tracer, into both true and sham
acupoints.6 The scan of the injection sites showed
random diffusion of the tracer around the sham point but rapid progression of
the tracer along the meridian at a rate that was inconsistent with either
lymphatic/vascular flow or nerve conduction. Another study demonstrated that
needling a point on the lower leg traditionally associated with the eye
activated the occipital cortex of the brain as detected by functional magnetic
resonance imaging.7"

Two things here are of note. First, real acupuncture points are different
than sham (or fake) acupuncture points, and in fact the real points showed
progression of the tracer substance along the meridian, despite the fact no
physical structure corresponding to such a meridian has been found. Second,
needling a point in the leg has an effect on the brain. An important feature of
acupuncture is that various parts of the body can be treated by actually
sticking the needles somewhere else. Why? Because the whole body is
interconnected.

Another beneficial effect of acupuncture is the regulation of the autonomic
nervous system. There are two main aspects to this system, the sympathetic
nervous system (involved in our "fight or flight" responses to dangerous
situations) and the parasympathetic nervous system (involved in resting,
relaxing, healing, and digesting). Studies on acupuncture often focus on the
effectiveness of treatments for specific conditions, such as headaches, PMS, or
allergies. If these studies also take note of signs of autonomic nervous
activity, such as temperature, pulse rate, or blood pressure, it is
consistently shown that acupuncture promotes parasympathetic activity. What
does this mean for you? In our busy, stressful lives with kids screaming,
traffic jams, and difficult schedules, our sympathetic nervous systems are
hyperactive, so our bodies are too often in the "fight or flight" state in
which our blood pressure and heart rates increase, pupils dilate, and digestive
function decreases. It is also the state in which resources are not directed
toward healing.

Do you feel stressed? If you can feel it, there's a good chance your
sympathetic nervous system is in overdrive. So give us a call! A treatment at
Lake Highlands
Acupuncture will focus on your specific health concerns, whether or not
they include stress. But the happy side effect is that, regardless, your
sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems will be brought into greater
balance, allowing your body the chance to rest, relax, heal, and enjoy
life.

Acupuncture is still a very novel form of medicine in the West, though
archeological evidence suggests that it has been practiced in some form for
close to 5,000 years. Of course, the medicine has undergone significant
evolution in that time. Thank goodness! No one would want to be stabbed by the
heavy stone needles that have been found dating to the Neolithic Era!
Similarly, the theories on which acupuncture is based are very old but have
also been modified, updated, and polished as time has gone on. In fact, the
medicine continues to evolve and change to this very day.

Acupuncture is one component of traditional Chinese medicine, a group of
practices that also includes herbal medicine, moxibustion, body work,
energy-based forms of exercise, and dietary therapy. Moxibustion, the burning
of the herb mugwort in direct or indirect contact with the skin, is such an
important component that in China, the general practices are most often
referred to as acupuncture and moxibustion, rather than as
acupuncture alone.

The theories that form the foundation of traditional Chinese medicine are
Yin-Yang Theory and Five-Element or Five-Phase Theory, both of which
are foundational understandings of Daoism and may be used to describe any and
all Earthly phenomena. Yin-Yang theory is the more basic, setting up a
basic dualism similar to how we think in the West. Yang describes the
aspects of anything that are characterized by movement, heat, dryness, power,
uprising, spreading, male-ness. Yin describes the aspects of anything
characterized by stasis, coolness, moisture, suppleness and nourishment,
downward and inward movement, female-ness. Concerning bodily ailments,
yin and yang make for easy descriptors. Heart burn is
yang in nature due to the feeling of burning or heat. Chills or cold
hands would be yin in nature. These are very basic examples.

What makes Yin-Yang theory different from Western dualism is the
understanding that the two aspects are interdependent, unlike in the West where
we tend to prefer thinking of things like life and death or sickness and health
being independent, thus allowing for the possibility that sickness and death
may not be necessary. With Yin-Yang, one cannot exist without the other.
Furthermore, one is continually changing into the other. For example, eating a
lot of cold, damp food like ice cream initially causes a yin, cold feeling in
the stomach. However, because such food is difficult to process, it often leads
to indigestion and heart-burn, a more yang sensation.

Five-element theory is a more nuanced outlook, dividing Earthly phenomena into
five categories: water, wood, fire, earth, and metal. Wood corresponds to the
season of spring, when plants grow. It is a warm season, but not as warm as
summer, which corresponds to fire. Therefore, fire is more yang than wood in
terms of temperature. The other elements follow in kind, earth is late summer,
metal is fall, water is winter. Over centuries of observation, these elements
were applied to the organs of the body for diagnostic purposes. Water
corresponds to the kidneys and bladder, wood to the liver and gallbladder, fire
to the heart and small intestine, earth to the stomach and spleen, and metal to
the lungs and large intestine.

The five elements can be viewed as occurring in a cycle. Water gives rise to
wood (which needs water to grow), fire burns wood, the ashes become earth,
earth begets metal (as in the metal ore deposits within the earth), and metal
gives rise to water. That last one takes a little more imagination to see, but
one example occurs with the condensation that easily occurs on metal. This is
called the generating cycle. There is also a controlling cycle, as in water
controlling fire and metal controlling wood. When the organ correspondences are
used, one can see how internal pathologies can travel in the body. For example,
the liver (wood) is the organ most closely associated with stress. When stress
causes wood to become overactive, the next element in the sequence can be
affected, in this case earth. Earth corresponds to the digestive organs of
stomach and spleen. This is why stress can lead to indigestion, diarrhea, and
even such things as irritable bowel syndrome.

At the basic level, both yin-yang and five-element theories are analogies or
symbolic representations to represent biological phenomena in terms that
ancient people understood, namely as how earthly phenomena corresponded to
biological phenomena. The methods of treatment, including acupuncture, herbs,
and moxibustion, based on these symbolic understandings were developed and
refined over hundreds and thousands of years without the benefit of modern
scientific research.

Modern Western medicine operates under the understanding, from the Age of
Enlightenment, that knowledge is advanced through the use of the scientific
method. Ancient Eastern medicine was built through centuries and millenia of
clinical observation. Modern Western medicine now considers valid only those
treatments that can be "proven" with double-blind, placebo-controlled studies.
Ancient medicine most often considered a treatment valid if the patient felt
better and grew less sick. Modern research with greater controls is only fairly
recently being performed on acupuncture. The results have been favorable enough
that the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of
Health consider acupuncture an effective treatment for a variety of
conditions.

The lack of wide-ranging scientific "proof" about the efficacy of acupuncture
and other complementary medical modalities has resulted in the idea that these
treatments are nothing more than elaborate placebos that work merely through
coincidence or belief. Indeed, many people think that such treatments will not
work if the patient does not "believe" in them. Those who have received benefit
from acupuncture, many of whom began without either belief or disbelief in its
validity, see things differently. For many, acupuncture works. The proof is
that they feel better, and they don't need a double-blind, placebo-controlled
study to tell them it worked. Indeed, I've performed hundreds of treatments and
can say without reservation that acupuncture treatment does not require belief.
The precise placement of acupuncture needles into the body causes physiological
changes that may not be understood yet, but occur nevertheless. Acupuncture
does not work for every person, every time, for every condition. Nor does any
Western medical treatment. The question is, will it work for you? The
treatments are very safe and all but free of side-effects. There is very little
risk to giving it a try, aside from challenging your beliefs that it should not
work.